In order to properly manage e-mail, enterprises are typically required to implement various hardware and/or software solutions. Namely, enterprises typically employ various devices to filter e-mail content and policy enforcement, to protect against e-mail viruses, and to filter and remove spam e-mail.
E-mail has become a key method of communication in most enterprises. While a great productivity and communication tool, e-mail opens enterprises to certain risks and necessitates oversight and monitoring to ensure security and efficiency. For example, when electronic documents are sent outside the company, e-mail heightens the risk of disclosing proprietary information or a confidentiality breach, resulting in potential legal liabilities.
Further, specific laws govern communication in various industries, including financial services and healthcare. For example, NASD rule 3110 requires companies in the investment banking and securities business to monitor all e-mail communications for compliance. Even when there is no regulatory concern, policy enforcement of inbound and outbound communication makes good business sense. Therefore, companies must employ systems and methods of policy management and enforcement relative to their e-mail traffic.
Moreover, unsolicited mass e-mail or “spam” has become a serious problem for all Internet users. A user can receive tens of hundreds of spam messages in a given day. Some companies specialize in creating distribution lists that allow senders of spam or “spammers” to easily reach millions of undesiring recipients with advertisements and solicitations. Spam has thus evolved from simply being a nuisance to become a significant problem, especially for businesses. Spam affects employees' productivity, it introduces potential legal liability, and there are real costs to the recipients and their corporations. As a result, enterprises are also required to provide and maintain systems for filtering and removing spam e-mail.
With e-mail becoming ubiquitous in corporate environments and elsewhere, viruses and other harmful files have the ability to spread at lightning speed. Some estimate that today viruses, worms, and Trojan horses can spread and propagate at a rate of tens of thousands of copies per hour. At this rate, there is little time to update desktop and gateway anti-virus systems to ensure corporate networks and systems are protected. Thus, enterprises also employ systems for filtering viruses from e-mail traffic.
Providing and maintaining numerous separate and independent solutions for processing e-mail can be complex, costly and difficult. Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a system for processing e-mail that can integrate policy enforcement, content filtering, virus protection and spam filtering in a single system.